Tesla’s electric shock
New buyers’ fury as prices slashed by up to £9,000 overnight
IF you’ve just bought a Tesla, you might want to sit down.
For owner Elon Musk has slashed the price of the electric cars by as much as £9,000 overnight.
The starting price for a Model Y has been cut by £7,000 to £44,990, while the price for an entry-level Model 3 has been reduced by £8,100 to £42,990.
They were the top two bestselling cars in the UK last month, with a total of 16,368 registered at the previous, higher prices.
The biggest discount was on the Model Y Performance, whose price was cut by just over £9,000, from £69,000 to £59,990. Consumer website Electrifying. com estimated that British motorists who bought a Tesla before Christmas could have saved a combined total of £130million by buying in the New Year.
Members of a Facebook group for UK Tesla owners expressed their frustration, with one writing: ‘I just picked up the car yesterday. What should I do? Go to Tesla and give back the car? I can’t believe after a few hours from picking up the car I lost £5,000.’ Electrifying.com founder Ginny Buckley said: ‘Carmakers will usually carefully manage prices and incentives to avoid crashing used values and upsetting customers.
‘This controversial move from Tesla is bound to send shockwaves through the industry, with the premium brand now sending signals that it is becoming much more mainstream.’ The price cuts were echoed across Europe and in the US in a desperate bid by Musk to boost the brand’s sales.
Discounts also swept across Asian markets last week, where industry competition is particularly fierce. The move, which prompted a 6 per cent fall in Tesla shares in early trading in New York, comes after the company endured a rocky performance on Wall Street last year, where its shares fell 65 per cent.
Tesla said in a statement: ‘As we exit what has been a turbulent year of supply chain disruptions, we have observed a normalisation of some of the cost inflation,
giving us the confidence to pass these [savings] to our customers.’
Musk admitted last year that Tesla prices had become ‘embarrassingly high’. Recent data has suggested that makers of electric cars more generally are slowing down UK production as the vehicles price out those hit by the cost of living squeeze and inflation.
James Baggott, editor-in-chief of Car Dealer Magazine, said: ‘While these price cuts are great news for new Tesla buyers, there will be 16,000 owners who took delivery in December who will be furious that they paid the higher price.
‘Tesla buyers who have not yet taken delivery will be able to cancel and order at the new price – but for those who have already taken delivery there’s little they can do.’